


Fuego!

by gin_eater



Series: Interstate Love Songs [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Porn with Feelings, Reunion Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-10 23:04:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20143474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gin_eater/pseuds/gin_eater
Summary: On the road to Wichita, Ashe and McCree find themselves confronting the elephant in the room regarding their renewed acquaintanceship.





	Fuego!

_Baby, it's been so long that even the rose's hips are turning me on..._

Murder By Death, «Fuego!»

He signaled to Ashe to pull in at a travel plaza near McLean, for a much-needed pit stop and to wait for B.O.B. to catch them up. Through tacit agreement, as they were still technically in Deadlock territory, they parked on opposite sides of the building, both to minimize attention and double the odds of a successful getaway, in the unlikely event they were seen together by anyone who'd know what they were looking at.

McCree climbed off his bike and stretched, cracking his neck and straightening his serape before heading inside.

Ashe came through the set of doors directly across the plaza at the same time he did, looking flushed and windblown, her hat dangling behind her by its drawstring around her neck. McCree pretended not to notice the slight hitch in her gait when she spotted him, feeling suddenly, similarly nervous himself.

They met in the middle, like a duel in reverse, and just as tense, but in a newly different way.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," he replied. "How you feelin'?"

"Okay. Half-starved, my ass is numb, and I gotta piss like a racehorse, but other than that…"

McCree chuckled. "Well, you go take care of that, and I'll get us somethin' to eat. Breakfast or lunch?"

"Uh... Surprise me." She shrugged and gave him a quick, endearingly awkward smile, then took off for the ladies'.

McCree watched her go for a moment.

Surprise her. Like she'd surprised him.

When he'd first heard through the underworld grapevine that the head honcho of the Deadlock Rebels was hanging up her hat and moving on to pastures new, he thought maybe he'd been served a bad batch of tequila, and was hallucinating.

His next thought was that it could be a trap -- not so much that the septuagenarian bootlegger he'd been dropping eaves on three barstools down was necessarily aware of it, but it would hardly have been the first time Ashe had peppered her trail with false information to throw off whatever hounds were baying up her backside. The woman could hold a grudge tight enough to raise a blister; if she'd decided McCree had been pulling her leg with his apology and the offer that came after it, then using the latter as bait to get him back within range of her Viper had a vindictive poetry to it of which he could see the literary appeal.

His third thought, however, was more circumspect. He was too personal a weakness for Ashe to expose so boldly. Even if she'd finally committed herself to killing him, she wouldn't risk a hoax that could potentially undermine her own authority in the gang. She was too much a woman of her word to court that kind of instability, even -- especially -- for the likes of a deserter like him.

Which left only one probable option: that the information was legit, and she really was leaving Deadlock -- her pride and joy dysfunctional family of grifters, tramps and thieves -- to go with him.

To _be_ with him, he thought. Probably.

Maybe. Eventually.

McCree would flirt with a chair if he liked the look of its legs, but his mama had taught him better than to expect anything more than the breeze on his wagging tongue in return, no matter who or what he was trying to charm. He and Ashe had a history, but they'd always stopped short of calling it official, or even romantic -- a relationship of sorts, definitely, but a complicated snarl of friendship and sex and all manner of feelings they hadn't dared voice, full of juvenile posturing and a feral distrust of anything pretentious enough to call itself love.

They were older now, but wiser? Better prepared to lasso whatever it was that had always been between them, take it down and tie it up and punch a label through its ear? That was a whole other bucket of possums.

The leap Ashe had just made was a big one: it had altered her circumstances on a tectonic level, and McCree didn't fool himself into thinking the size of her smile when he'd pulled up beside her meant that she wasn't shaken by its magnitude. He knew very well what Deadlock meant to her, and she'd be brittle from this, mourning it; even if the choice to go had been her own, it had to be wreaking havoc on her existential equilibrium.

They both had to make an effort to be mature about things this time around, responsible -- take it slow, re-establish their partnership on platonic terms and figure out if it was even still viable anymore, before they could consider falling back into old, admittedly mind-blowing, but emotionally slippery and potentially volatile habits.

"What do we got?" Ashe asked, exiting the restroom with a fresh russet lip and a nod at the paper bag now in McCree's right hand.

"Haystacks," he said, then lifted the drink holder in his left: "Americanos."

"Thank god. You wanna sit outside? I'm dyin' for a smoke."

He gestured for her to lead on, and they found a shaded metal table and chairs at the edge of the fenced-in outdoor dining area. McCree tugged off his glove and unpacked their breakfast while Ashe lit up, sipping at her coffee between drags, her eyes closing rapturously, complete with a little moan of satisfaction, as the combination of nicotine and caffeine hit her system.

McCree shifted slightly in his seat, and cleared his throat.

"Think you can make it to Wichita?" he asked.

Ashe opened her eyes, exhaling a plume of smoke. "That where we're headed?"

"For today."

"And for tomorrow?"

He shrugged. "Ain't sure yet."

"Bullshit. You just don't trust me yet."

He shook his head. "Nope. But I reckon that goes both ways."

She lifted an eyebrow, and her eyes flashed in that peevish way he knew so well. "So it does."

McCree sighed. It was too early to be fighting with her, in all manner of ways. "Look, if it means anything, I _am_ lookin' to trust you. I wouldn't have come back otherwise. And I know you wouldn't have left the gang if you weren't lookin' to do the same. So let's just take it easy, make some good faith assumptions, and give each other a little bit of time, all right?"

Ashe scoffed, and flicked what was left of her cigarette out into the parking lot. "Whatever you say, Doctor Phil."

McCree rolled his eyes. "Ashe..."

She ignored him and popped open her breakfast carton, brusquely added salt and pepper and hot sauce to the pile of griddle-fried cholesterol contained therein.

"Ashe," he said again, pushing the carton's lid back down with one hand and taking one of her hands in his other, and only holding it tighter when she tried to snatch it away.

"_What,_ Jesse?" she said sharply, then took a deep breath, and looked at him, softening a fraction. "What?"

"I know not knowin' things drives you nuts, but you can trust that I'm not keepin' anything from you out of spite, nor will I ever let you go in on a job any blinder to its particulars than I am."

She was quiet a moment, then dropped her gaze to their linked hands on the table top, where he noticed the scuffed thumb of his prosthesis was brushing gently, rhythmically, across the backs of her fingers, quite without his conscious input.

Old habits, indeed.

"All right, fine," she conceded, taking her hand back and hiding a shiver behind a shrug. "One day at a time and you're not tryin' to get me killed, got it. May I eat now?"

McCree gestured at her food with his right hand, and rested his traitorous mechanical left under the table against his thigh. "Chow down."

Ashe did.

It had always amused McCree to watch her eat anything that required cutlery. Give her a burger, a burrito, any kind of finger food, and she could hold her sloppy own with the roughnecks she ran with, but stick a knife and fork in her hands, and the rigors of a privileged upbringing made themselves apparent in every elegant slice, spear, and scoop, even when the utensils were plastic and the dish an ungainly pile of hash browns, ham, and eggs over-easy.

He remembered poking fun at her for it when they were younger, mimicking the movements with exaggerated pinkies-up affectation, until she'd lob a piece or spoonful of whatever she was eating at his head.

"What are you smilin' at?" Ashe demanded, glaring at him as she sawed through her ham steak in two quick, clean cuts.

McCree indicated her hands with a nod of his chin. "Still so ladylike," he said.

"_Efficient,_" she corrected. "I am not gonna waste my valuable time passin' my fork back and forth between my hands. It's a meal, not a fuckin' relay race."

"Uh-huh."

"Fuck you, McCree. Mind your own damn food."

He laughed, and humored her, doing as he was told.

B.O.B. pulled in just as they'd finished eating, but he declined to sit down, instead automatically gathering up their empty containers and sorting things into plastic and paper to be thrown away in the appropriate receptacles.

"B.O.B., you don't gotta do that," said McCree, moving to take back his own trash.

B.O.B. looked at him, puzzled.

"He knows," said Ashe. "He likes to."

"Well, I don't like him to."

Ashe looked ready to argue, but bit her tongue when B.O.B. gripped McCree's shoulder with one huge hand, and flickered one of his eye lights in a reassuring wink.

McCree felt unaccountably sheepish. "No offense, buddy. It's just not my way to let another feller pick up after me, even if he doesn't mind doin' it."

B.O.B. nodded, clapping McCree good-naturedly on the back hard enough to make him grunt, and contented himself with Ashe's mess only.

She did, McCree noticed, thank the Omnic for his trouble, and he reminded himself of his past determination to just let them be as they were, even if he'd never fully understand it. He knew B.O.B. knew how to say no just as clearly as he'd seen Ashe hop promptly out of a truck to help push it through the mud. Hell, McCree's first introduction to the two of them as a unit had been when B.O.B. showed up to make Ashe's ransom drop, and -- after she'd hurriedly explained the situation and McCree's head was no longer in danger of being popped like a zit between the butler-slash-bodyguard's massive metal paws -- immediately bent his charge over one knee and delivered three swift swats to her ass for running off and worrying him the way she had.

He hadn't hurt her any -- he'd been aiming for her pride, not her pain -- but he'd damn well made his point. It was the most humbled McCree had ever seen Ashe look, and he still wished he'd gotten it on video.

Now that he thought about it, B.O.B.'s memory chip had to be a veritable gold mine of humiliating material, and god only knew what else. No wonder Ashe had upgraded his weapons system -- these days, his AI was probably protected by a firewall originally designed for a missile defense site. McCree counted that a good thing, considering the shady characters with whom they were set to mingle, sooner or later.

They each had a smoke, and then McCree stood up, stretching again.

"You ready to get back on the Mother Road?"

Ashe hesitated like she was on the fence about saying something, but changed her mind, and fell back on the side of the more familiar field. "Yeah. Wichita by golden hour, all set."

McCree wasn't buying it. He wasn't wholly sure he wanted to hear the price of the thing she hadn't said, either, but he knew he'd have to nip any of these early insecurities of hers in the bud before they could sink deep and end up sprouting resentful weeds come spring.

"Uh-uh," he said. "You've been chewin' your bit about something since we got here. Come on, now. Out with it."

She shook her head. "It ain't important right now."

"But it'll be important later?"

Ashe folded her arms across her chest. "Might. Might not."

"Darlin'--"

"Don't call me that."

_There_ it was.

McCree was quiet a moment. "Ain't ever bothered you before," he pointed out.

"Well it does now!"

"Why?"

Ashe's eyes narrowed, knowing she'd been caught. She looked out over the parking lot, at the big blue nothing of the sky bowing over the earth as far as the eye could see.

"Look," she said after a minute, "I just... I feel like a dog that's finally caught a car, all right? I don't quite know what to do with you."

"You don't gotta do anything with me. That ain't why I asked you to come. No-- No, don't, that's not--"

He took her by the shoulders and turned her back around.

"I didn't mean… It's just that, you and I... Hey." He tipped her face up with a finger to her chin, which was perhaps a mistake, because it seemed to spook all his carefully reasoned words into bolting. "You and I..." he tried again.

Something something slippery slope… Platonic…

"There's so much we gotta…"

Mind-blowing...

She was so, so pretty.

"Aw, hell."

He wasn't sure which one of them moved first -- only that one moment, he'd felt like he couldn't breathe, and then in the next he was breathing her, his right hand cupping the familiar curve of her jawline, slipping around to the base of her skull when she opened her mouth against his, and at the first graze of her tongue on his lips he lifted her up and her legs folded tight around his waist and the frayed, scrawny piece of twine that was his better judgement snapped under the perfect weight of her body in his arms.

McCree had expected the urgency of it, the fire she lit in his belly that traveled up his spine like a fuse, because it had always been like that with her, always; what caught him off guard and caused his heart to stutter up into his throat was the sense of sheer _relief_ that was hot on its heels -- a bright, deep feeling of something banked and then unburied -- fundamental, like his very bones might be glowing with it, and he knew, in the instant she broke the kiss and pulled back to look at him, startled and breathless, her ruby eyes wide and dark, full of lust and lost and found, he knew that she felt it, too.

"Wichita," he said, his own voice hoarse and foreign to his ears, barely managing to remember that they were in the middle of a travel plaza teeming with long-haul truckers and road-tripping families, with B.O.B. standing a few feet away and politely pretending to scan the oncoming traffic.

"Wichita," Ashe repeated, sounding like she'd never heard the word before. "Kansas."

"Right. Ain't that far. Couple of hours."

"Right."

Her eyes darted between his eyes and his lips, and in the space of a breath he was sharing hers again, licking into her mouth as her fingernails raked his scalp, sending sparks of pleasure skittering down and through his limbs.

"Ashe…" he whispered, and was unable to tell himself whether it was a warning or a plea.

They had to go. They had to go, _now,_ or they never would.

Somehow, McCree found the will to set her down, suppressing a shudder at the slide of her body against his as he did. He brushed her hair away from her face and ran his thumb along her cheekbone, biting his own lip at the state of hers, swollen and pink, with the remnants of her lipstick staining the edges of her mouth.

He closed his eyes and kissed her forehead in a weak attempt at dialing back the volume of his desire.

"_Bike,_ little girl," he ordered, forcing himself to step away.

Ashe nodded, uncurling her fingers from where they'd been bunching up the fabric of the back of his shirt. She took her hat from B.O.B.'s outstretched hand -- exactly when she'd lost it, McCree had not the slightest idea -- and headed, a little unsteadily, for the gleaming gold Hyper-Glide at other the end of the lot. She looked back, once, and smiled when he did, the expression falling somewhere between mischievous and coy.

McCree swallowed and sent up a silent prayer to the theory of relativity, that it would kindly allow the next three hours to pass as quickly as possible, or else this was going to be the longest ride of his life...

* * *

Ashe winced as the hotel room door bounced off the wall and hit her square in the back.

"Sorry," McCree mumbled against her jaw, stepping inside and swinging around to kick the damned thing closed again.

"S'okay," she said, tossing her hat and his, crumpled in her hand, to the floor before burying her fingers in his hair as she went back to crushing her mouth against his.

McCree leaned her against the wall, groaning, about ready to rip through the layers of fabric that separated her body from his. He'd been half-hard the whole drive, and no, relativity -- or karma, maybe -- had not been kind. The back roads skirting around Oklahoma City alone had felt like a neverending blur of yellowing grass and the ghost of her perfume -- jasmine, gardenia, and tuberose, flowers as white as her hair whipping in the wind, and more than once he'd had to talk himself out of pulling over and leading her into one of a hundred different temptingly tall and private-looking cornfields, just to take the edge off.

He wanted to do right by this, their first time in a long time, and that meant a room somewhere, with climate control and indoor plumbing and a bed they were looking less and less likely to make it to with every passing second…

Ashe let go of him just long enough to drop the Viper, slung over her shoulder like a pocketbook, and wriggled herself free of one sleeve of her jacket. McCree tugged the other one off and cast the garment aside, then pinioned her between his hips and the wall as he tugged her tie loose and got to work on the buttons of her shirt, while she unraveled the serape from around his shoulders and started on the straps of his chest plate.

"You wear more fuckin' clothes than I do," she muttered, jerking against him with a gasp as his incisors nipped at the skin of her throat, and then moaning when he kissed away the sting. "God, Jesse…"

With a clatter and a thump, his armor hit the floor, followed almost immediately by her shirt and tie. McCree allowed himself a moment to take in the glorious sight of her breasts, not large but brim-full in the delicate lace of her bra, and his cock twitched at the experiential knowledge that reminded him she always had on panties to match.

"Fuck," he swore, hoisting her higher and lowering his mouth to one nipple, rosy and pebbled behind its ivory veil, and goddamn, the _noise_ Ashe made when he suckled and tweaked it gently between his teeth, a throaty whimper that went straight to his dick.

Wrapping an arm around his neck, she bucked them away from the wall, and McCree staggered backwards further into the room, until the backs of his legs hit the edge of the bed and he half-sat, half-fell on to the mattress with a grunt. She untangled her legs from around his waist and stood, the move followed by a mutually hasty shedding of boots and gun belts and chaps and trousers and McCree's shirt, still encircling his torso through the heroic efforts of a single button.

She was back on him the second he kicked his boxers away, straddling his thighs and kissing a hot, wet path from his collar bone to his jawline as she trapped his erection between one smooth palm and the textured lace of her (as suspected, matching) panties. Holding onto his shoulder for balance, she lifted and lowered her hips as if riding him, and McCree moaned, his eyes fluttering shut at the warm drag of silk meshwork and filigree against the sensitive underside of his cock. His real hand kept time with her movements, kneading at the flesh of her thigh -- firmer than he remembered, more muscular -- while he busied the artificial one with fisting the sheets behind him, momentarily wary of its strength amid his increasing distraction.

"You like that?" Ashe murmured close to his ear, and sent a hard shiver crackling down his spine when she caught the lobe between her teeth before licking up the shell.

"Jesus," he breathed. "What's not to like?"

She laughed, low and devilish, and stilled when McCree sat up straighter, both hands sliding around her back to undo the clasps of her bra, and then they were finally, feverishly skin to skin.

She was so soft, he marveled, and she smelled obscenely fucking good, a vulgar mix of leather and road dust and cigarettes and sweat, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in like he could get high off the line.

"You've filled out," she observed, running her hands along the breadth of his shoulders, down his sides and back up his chest, passing her fingers through the dark hair there, more abundant now than when he'd been a farm-strong but comparatively skinny teenager. "Not that wiry beanpole anymore."

"And you…" he said, noticing that the thorny roses rambling up her left arm weren't the only new additions to her skin since the last time he'd seen this much of her, "...have grown yourself a whole damn desert garden."

She had, too: a large cluster of sunflowers decorated the side of one of her thighs, and bluebonnets and bobbing yucca bells blossomed from the small to the middle of her back. When he turned and eased her down onto the bed, he discovered that the top of each foot was ornamented with its very own nosegay -- bright Indian paintbrushes on the right, and golden tansy buttons on the left.

An inch-high horseshoe adorned her pelvic arch, just above the hem of her panties, and a line of text done in old-fashioned Spencerian script followed the curve beneath her right breast: _Climb on and run…_

He ran a thumb over the horseshoe. "Lucky me?"

Ashe winked. "Lucky you."

He skated his knuckles across her stomach to trace the quote on her ribs with two fingers. It was darker than the other ones, fresher -- no more than a couple of months old, if he had to guess.

"You soundin' out the words?" She smirked, but the lightness of her tone sounded forced, nervous.

He set aside his suspicions as to the quote's significance, and shook his head. "Just admiring the sentiment."

She relaxed again and smiled, biting her lip, moving his hand up to her breast. "You wanna do more than admire it?"

He didn't think he'd ever wanted anything more in his life.

He gave her breast a squeeze, and Ashe laughed as he grabbed her by both hips and hauled her further down the bed. She lifted her legs so he could slip off her panties, and he kissed his way up her inner thighs, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply when he reached the deep pink treasure between them, relishing the scent of her arousal, like the rest of her but _more,_ sharp and rich and mouth-watering.

Ashe jerked at the first stroke of his tongue against her folds, and McCree hummed in appreciation at the salted honey taste of her. She carded a hand through his hair, moaning when he gently dipped inside, sweeping slow circles around her entrance, his breath coming in hot puffs against her clit.

"Jesse…" she begged, scratching at his scalp.

He kept it up, knowing full well it took a rougher touch to get her off, until she was squirming against the ironclad hold he had on her thighs, toes curling and flexing, her expression creased in exquisite frustration.

"Shit…" she hissed, palms pressed against her forehead. "Is this payback for somethin'?"

"Maybe," he admitted. "I got a list somewhere. But mostly I just like watchin' you get all worked up."

"Bastard..." The slander was followed by a shout as he gave her clit a pointedly fleeting suckle. "_God--_ I swear to fucking Christ, McCree, if you don't get a fuckin' move on I'll--"

He moved up her body fast as a prairie fire, hooking an arm under one of her knees and drawing her leg up to rest in the crook of his elbow.

"You'll what?" he asked, and rolled his hips, sliding the shaft of his cock teasingly along the soft, slick seam of her cunt.

Ashe bared her teeth in a carnal sneer. "Fuck me now or you'll never find out."

McCree bit his lip, altogether throbbing at the husky note of promise in her voice. "Well, in that case…"

He reached down between them, lining himself up, and in one smooth stroke, he was home.

Ashe cursed, arching up against him, her fingertips biting into his biceps, and any notion he'd had about drawing this out fell to pieces in those first sweet, scorching moments, when he realized he'd be lucky to make it to five minutes after three-plus hours of anticipation and countless ones of missing her -- _wanting_ her -- more than he could ever bear to acknowledge.

It all came back too easily: the tight, quick rocking of her hips, so perfectly attuned to the pace of his; the blunt dig of her heels in his back; the way her hands shifted frantically from his face to his nape to his shoulders and back again, greedy and pleading as she swore a blue streak in the high, desperate keens he'd thought he'd only ever hear again in his bad nights' better dreams.

Pleasure coiled, quick and ruthless, at the base of his spine, a white-hot wire of euphoria so close to snapping, he wasn't sure how much longer he could last before it broke -- but a flush was creeping up Ashe's chest, too, staining her neck and face, telling him she was as close as he was, her breaths harshening in concert with his thrusts, blending together like the sweat he could feel beading between his shoulder blades.

She pushed the damp hair out of his face, cupped his jaw in her trembling hands. "Come with me," she whispered, pressing her brow against his. "Come with me, come with me…"

As if he had a choice.

His eyes squeezed shut and he kissed her, hard, wrapping his free arm around her back, groaning deep and grinding down against her as the first peals of orgasm thundered through him. Ashe bucked up, clutching at him without and within, his name a choked-off sob in her throat as she tensed and shuddered and shattered beneath him.

_So good,_ he thought, letting the waves roll through him until they subsided into ripples, savoring every little quake that passed between them in the gradually surfacing calm.

McCree opened his eyes to meet hers, half-lidded and pleasure-dazed. In no hurry to have their bodies unhitched, he adjusted his weight and relaxed on top of her, smiling as Ashe smoothed the arches of her feet down along the backs of his legs.

"Not bad, cowboy," she appraised, thumbing the cleft in his chin hidden underneath his beard.

McCree snorted. "Aw, shucks," he said. "I bet you say that to all the guys."

Ashe shrugged. "If they've earned it."

"Mhm." He dropped his head to her shoulder, nuzzling into the side of her neck, feeling almost criminally comfortable after a physically demanding and emotionally charged day that had started the morning before. Ashe had picked out and paid for the hotel room -- rooms, as B.O.B. was in the adjacent suite with Ashe's saddlebags -- which meant the place was fancy enough to start with an H, despite its not even sitting on the same bench as the lap of luxury McCree knew she could afford. He himself could and would sleep just about anywhere without complaint, but he had to admit, a plush king-sized bed and sheets with a four-digit thread count weren't either gift horses upon which he had any present interest in orally inspecting…

"Oh, no," Ashe said firmly, "you are _not_ fallin' asleep right now. You are too damn heavy. And you stink."

He made a churlish noise in the back of his throat. "You stink, too."

"Yes, I'm aware of that, that's why I want your bulky ass off me, so we can both get a shower."

"Bath," McCree insisted. "_With_ bubbles."

"You want me to have room service send up a rubber ducky, too?"

"Naw." He lifted his head and propped himself up on his forearms, a sly smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "We can make our own fun."

"Can we, now?"

He canted his hips, grinning wolfishly when she gasped in response, her eyes lighting up in surprise and delight -- being with her had him feeling like he was eighteen again, in more ways than one.

"I guess we can," she granted, twining her arms around his neck and pulling him in for the next in a long series of kisses, and another round in the first of many matches to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Ashe's underboob tattoo is from "The Call of the Canyon" by Zane Grey, which is about a jazz age socialite who follows her shell-shocked love out West after he returns home from WWI. I imagine McCree probably has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Grey's oeuvre.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading. ♥


End file.
